IRIS – HOW HELPING A STRANGER HELPED ME

Trust is a funny thing, a commodity to be bargained. You give a bit then you see the results and give a bit more – always testing, always monitoring. You can snatch it back as soon as it doesn’t feel right and back peddle until you feel the right amount has been given. Some people give too much and then feel they don’t have any left – but just like love there’s always more. An unending reservoir to be tapped and bring you the most amazing things.

Some days it comes easier than others and the pay off is so large you think why don’t I use this gift-laden skill more often. Yesterday was one of those days.

Harassed and Frazzled

Harassed and frazzled from packing and posting February’s Bling It On pack out to all our subscribers I sat in my car in traffic and made a split second decision. Right for Tesco or left for Aldi or neither and just go straight home. I remember mulling it over in my mind quite clearly. I’m glad I did.

Aldi won. It was absolutely freezing, the kind of cold that nips at your fingers and toes and makes it easy to stay home and not go anywhere. So it was natural to start a discussion about this toe numbing coldness because it’s all everyone was thinking about. A lady joined the queue behind me and I instantly felt like I should help her, a funny but warm feeling where you don’t think you just act.

Bonding Over Gloves

I helped her with her shopping, up onto the conveyor belt, and we started to chat. She was wearing soft woolly, fleece lined mittens and I was wearing leopard skin lined leather ones. Total opposites but they sparked our conversation – two women admiring each other’s gloves like only women can!

We talked about how cold it was and her matching fleece lined coat looked warm but not warm enough for the bitter weather, and waiting for the bus she’d told me she would have to catch to get home. She had her hood up around her face and it shielded her hair so it was hard to judge how old she was but I could tell she was old enough to need to be warm.

My shopping was whizzing through in the way only Aldi cashiers can, where you have to catch it like some sort of quick fire tennis ball training machine that leaves you fielding shots that are so rapid you’re scared stuff will fly onto the floor. I didn’t have much time to think, but, in the time that I did, my mind had a super fast internal conversation that went like this:

Offer her a lift it’s freezing out there. No don’t you’ve got so much to do. No do it, she’s going to freeze waiting for the bus. What if I offer and she says no? What if I offer and she says yes? At least if I offer I know I’ve done the right thing. Will I regret this if I walk away and don’t offer? Yes. Yes I will.

All in the space of seconds like how rapid acting on your instincts can be. So I walked back to her place in the queue and said “shall I drop you home it’s very cold out there?” She looked a bit stunned to be honest and like she hadn’t really absorbed what I’d said so I reiterated “you don’t want to be waiting for a bus in this weather”.

Swallow Hard & Persist

Her face lit up as she clicked what I’d said and I was now deeply conscious everyone was looking at me and had to swallow hard and persist. The cashier had both her hands up and clasped resting over her heart and was beaming at us, which was encouraging because I was so worried people would think I was an actually an ‘old lady napper’.

She replied with“no dear you don’t want to be doing that” so I told a white lie and replied “honestly it’s no trouble I’m going that way anyway”. I wanted her to feel comfortable and I was causing a hold up in the queue, and that does not go down well in Aldi.

She said yes! My fleece mittened friend took the leap of faith that I had too and trusted a stranger. We instantly went into industrious mode, like we’d always known each other. Whizzing her few little bits of shopping through and straight into her shopping trolley like we’d been a team for years. The cashier waved us off all misty eyed, and into the unknown we strolled.

As we got to the car I realised she rarely got in a car because it was actually quite cumbersome for her to lean down to get in it – like it was something she hadn’t done for a long while. That in itself was a leveller. My car that I just whizz about in and can go wherever I want is a freedom tool not everyone has access to.

My new friend told me where she lived and how just to pop to the shops she had walked a mile up her long road and waited for a bus just to get some milk and essentials in this freezing weather. She would’ve had to wait half an hour for the bus home and then pull her shopping trolley a mile down the road from the bus stop.

Iris

I introduced myself and she told me her name was Iris. It seemed right that now we were in the car together we should swap names. As we chatted she told me a fact that floored me and made my heart ache all in one fell swoop. Iris told me she was 95.

As that fact registered in my mind (along with the million questions I instantly had for her) all I could think was wow. She needed milk so she had to come all that way in this weather to get it, she is hardy and strong and WOW!

We chatted comfortably as we drove along sharing little guarded snippets of our lives like you do with relative strangers. It was more than just idle chit chat and enough to form opinions. We were both weighing each other up seeing if we could trust one another.

For her, I wonder if she was afraid at all, because I do think older people have to live with that fear of being more vulnerable. For me, I was guessing her cognitive abilities, marvelling at her age, wondering if she had family and wanting to know she was ok. So I could have faith in a world where I’d be older one day.

Little Snippets

So we shared these little snippets, each trusting the other just a little bit more with each fact shared and all the while thinking and guessing. I was over-sharing things I hoped would make her feel safe. Like being a mum, having a fairly sensible and responsible job, letting her know who I was so she could feel she wasn’t with a dodgy granny bashing stranger or at risk.

She freely shared, and on that short journey I learnt lots about her and her life. Like how her husband died 37 years ago. How she moved to the house she lives in such a long time ago. How she was spritely, bright and all round awe inspiring.

As we got to her house I didn’t want it to end, like a date that had gone well leaving you wanting more. I wanted to know all about her 95 years, what had shaped her. I needed to know who she saw and had contact with, who looked out for her and if she was ok, it had gone beyond offering a cold stranger a lift.

So we pulled up and she said “would you like to come in for a coffee. I hope you will”. There followed 2 hours of a tour of her house and garden and her fascinating life……..

To learn more about Iris, our feel good stories and how glad I am I offered her a lift – go to the next instalment here.

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